A/N: Can't believe I wrote this. I hate songfics. Don't kill me.
We'll do it all
Everything
On our own
We don't need
Anything
Or anyone
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Harry's days are a mad blur of activities, as he struggles to ready Hogwarts for the attack that surely must be coming. The teachers are of no use, claiming that children shouldn't be part of the battle and that they will protect them. Attempting to train students, organize evacuations, set up small hospital rooms around the castle, while avoiding being caught by Death Eater Children and Tattle-Tales alike, has him mostly exhausted.
Sometimes, he'll catch the sight of a blond head in the midst of a throng of students entering or leaving this or that class. He'll give Malfoy the patented glare and Malfoy will glare back, but there isn't any malice in either of their eyes. There isn't time for malice.
One such day, in a mostly empty bathroom, he ends up washing his hands next to Malfoy, who doesn't even look up. It's as though he's not noticed Harry.
"If you need anything, Potter..." comes a silent voice, from the corner of Malfoy's mouth. "Just tell me, I'll ..."
"I won't," says Harry. "It's all said and done."
Malfoy nods minutely once, spells his hands dry and leaves.
Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life
Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads
I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own
It's been seven years since Draco's hand was rejected for the very first time in his short life. So much has changed since then, since he got busted himself for being out after curfew and sent to spend a night in the Forbidden Forest. Where was the logic in that, by the way? Students having been up all night are sent to spend hours – at night – wandering a forest that was quite likely to give them all nightmares, causing even more sleep-deprivation.
Pfft. Then, McGonagall had rarely made sense. How full of cotton her head must be to not notice the literal buzz among the students, doors to rooms never used before showing signs of usage. Dense, the lot of them. Hogwarts had come alive with hundreds of students organizing... whatever they were doing. He could speculate and guess, but he'd rather not draw attention to that he'd noticed. When spring came, the buzzing grew and grew until it was an energy leaking into every part of the student population, like a swarm of bees just waiting for the first spring flowers.
Draco had his own things to do, his own agenda. Take ugly-arse tattoo. Give up life for the Dark Lord. That kind of stuff. He spent an hour every night speaking with this or that person in a fireplace or small mirror, giving reports that gave away nothing and still said everything. Like chasing bees and constantly looking in the wrong direction.
It was utterly exhausting. Those small words of confirmation, or something from Potter, were like soothing balm on his nerves. All was said and done. Everyone had their own place in this giant game of chess, and they would all perform like the greatest play ever written.
Yes. Yes, they would.
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life
Sometimes Harry doesn't want to be the one to get out of bed and stare at this or that piece of parchment. What it contains is beside the point by now, sometimes a spell, or a map of another route, or a hastily scribbled idea. It's speeding up, it's coming soon, and all Harry wants to do is sleep. No-one in his dorm is sleeping properly anyway, all of them up till the crack of dawn doing what they do best; work.
Yet, in the end it's his responsibility, all of it. Not much is as easy as good or evil, Gryffindor or Slytherin, Pureblood or Muggleborn. The only thing that is, is that this is his battle, his moment, his destiny. Doesn't matter if it was to begin with, if that Prophecy is true or not, because if it wasn't, then it was made true by people thinking it was.
Some days, he has to look hard to find beauty in the world again.
All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see
Looking back over his shoulder, when leaving for the last Hogsmede weekend, he catches Harry's eyes. They're green as death and he can see what apparently so few have noticed. Harry knows. Harry knows he's not coming back. Here's his past, right behind him, looking at him as he Disapparates.
I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all
He looks at Draco and knows they'll never meet like this again. It won't be boys meeting in school. Next time, they'll be on opposite ends of wands, spells on tips of their tongues. It'll never be the same again, but then he never expected anything else.
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?